2013 has started off with a bang, and January may have been one of the most newsworthy months for video games in the last several years. Here’s a recap of the events that led off what’s sure to be an eventful year for the video game industry.

Big Games of January

While typically a slower month for new releases, the month following the “holiday season” has recently become a good place to drop games that need a little more polish or just want to avoid the Call of Duty-dominated Q4. January 2013 saw a number of notable titles kick off the year:

- PlatinumGames’ first release of the year, Anarchy Reigns, and the PlayStation 3-exclusive Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch were long awaited localizations that finally found their home in US consoles. Despite unfortunate setbacks for some Ni no Kuni pre-orders, the reception to the Studio Ghibli/Level-5 partnership was received kindly by many.

- DmC: Devil May Cry is the first high-profile series reboot to hit stores in 2013, courtesy of Heavenly Sword and Enslaved developer Ninja Theory. Reaction to Dante’s new look may still be mixed, but for the most part, it seems that Namco chose wisely in bringing the Britain-based studio into the mix.

- The downloadable and mobile sphere saw plenty of buzz in January too, with adventure game pioneer Ron Gilbert’s The Cave tunneling into PCs and consoles. Skulls of the Shogun, a favorite of Penny Arcade Expo attendees for years, finally came to Xbox Live, Windows 8, Surface Tablet, and Windows Phones bringing asynchronous cross-platform gameplay to Microsoft’s newly integrated architecture. Meanwhile, PC gamers puzzled away at Antichamber, mobile gamers free-ran through Temple Run 2, and PlayStation Mobile started giving games away.

Tragedy of the sort inflicted upon the town of Newton, CT and Sandy Hook Elementary School is hard to grasp, and in the wake of such unspeakable horror it’s often of limited comfort to find a scapegoat to pin the blame. From gun control to mental health awareness to safer schools, the conversation gradually found its way to video games. In late December, the National Rifle Association—themselves the target of heavy criticism and condemnation—laid the blame for violence in US culture upon the video game industry, calling it a “callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry” citing games such as Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat, and Bulletstorm.

In early January, President Obama appointed Vice President Biden to lead a commission to explore how to respond to gun violence in the wake of Sandy Hook, and among those invited to the White House to take part in the discussion—along with gun lobbyists, mental health advocates, educators, and so forth—were members of the gaming industry. The idea of whether representatives of the industry should even attend the meeting was contentious, but highlighted the fact that the prevailing social consciousness regarding violence in games, and gaming in general, is extremely uninformed and woefully misrepresented. No matter where the conversation on gun violence in America goes, it seems that video games will continue to be (inextricably) linked.

Torso-gate

From simulated violence to fantastical violence, the social sphere was abuzz in January on the topic of violence in games. The issue took a bizarre left turn when Deep Silver, the developers behind 2010’s Dead Island, unveiled a special edition packaging for their upcoming sequel Dead Island Riptide, dubbed the ‘Zombie Bait Edition.’ I’ll let the promotional photo speak for itself:

As you might imagine, the sight of a decapitated, quadruple-amputee, voluptuous statue with a Union Jack bikini is going to turn more than a few heads. It took less than 24 hours for Deep Silver to pull the special edition from UK sellers, and issue an apology for “any offense caused” by the inclusion of a statue that they claimed was “cut up like many of our fans had done to the undead enemies in the original.” Besides being in incredibly poor taste, Deep Silver and their publishing partners hit on a broader trend in the industry: video game marketing has become overwhelmingly bad in recent years. Perhaps the zeitgeist revolving around this will lead to marked changes as the industry evolves and grows, or at least lead to a bit more common sense in how video games are presented to a public that already sees them as harmful.

Studios No More

We saw it coming. The signs were all there, the vultures were circling, and on January 22, the hammer fell. Formerly Toy-Head-Quarters, THQ Inc. is officially closed. After filing for bankruptcy in December, and being de-listed from the NASDAQ exchange at the beginning of the year, and following the objections of creditors to the quick-sale of the company to Clear Lake Capital Group, THQ’s individual assets—including studios, intellectual property, and licenses—were sold at auction. Major bids from the like of SEGA, Koch Media, and Ubisoft insured that many of the company’s valuable properties including Company of Heroes studio Relic and Saints Row developer Volition found homes, though both the Darksiders IP and developer were left to wither on the vine.

The sale and closure of THQ is a sad end to a once successful company, and one of that may have been avoided had the company avoided “massive mistakes” like their unsuccessful attempt to bring their uDraw tablet to all of this generation’s consoles. THQ wasn't the only company to close their doors in January as Disney Interactive announced that Epic Mickey developer Junction Point would also be shuttered in the wake of lower than forecasted sales for Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two. 2013 seems to continue a trend of major publishers closing and consolidating studios in recent years, and with the next-generation of game consoles drawing closer, it’s unfortunate that we won’t be seeing what the Warren Spectors and Jason Rubins of the world will be doing on those devices for quite a while now.

PlayStation’s Future

The Wii U was announced officially at the Nintendo press briefing at on June 5, 2012, the first day of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, signaling the beginning of the fourth generation of polygonal gaming and the eighth generation of video game consoles. On February 20, 2013, Sony Computer Entertainment and PlayStation want us to “see the future.” That future, according to ‘reliable’ anonymous sources, is the PlayStation 4.

Yes, it’s been widely rumored that this year would see announcement of new consoles from Sony and Microsoft, but the social media end-run by PlayStation PR on the last day of January may have been the first salvo in the publicity for these as-yet-unrevealed devices. It is fun to speculate on everything from technical specifications to controller design to new media features, but it all amounts to this: we really don’t know what is going into these machines. Not yet, at least. Hopefully that will all change in just three short weeks.